A column on the editorial page of today's WSJ was written by a Ms Mariann Fischer Boel, the EU commissioner for agriculture and rural development. Entitled "Message in a Bottle", it's all about how "Europe is producing too much wine for which there is no market... Stocks are already equivalent of one year's production, squeezing wine-makers' incomes". Even such measures as "distilling excess wine, storing it and in some cases, turning it into bioethanol for use in cars and factories has now become regular tool(s) of market management." At a taxpayer expense of some half-billion euros per year!

Her proposed solutions: spend more on marketing, take vineyard lands out of production, and loosen the rigid rules that govern the entire industry. All under the omnipotent hands of the EU bureaucrats, of course! Ha!

Here's a novel idea: how about firing all the EU micro-managers and letting the free market set the rules of the European wine industry? Figure the odds...